


falling like the stars

by spideywhiteys



Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [13]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Comfort, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, I know, Kakashi is a good friend, Kakashi is literally just ANBU wolf, M/M, Mid-life Crisis, Naruto is the sun, i tagged it as a ship anyway bc it feels open ended, it’s only sorta hinted if ur really looking, kakashi is like the moon, naruto has fox powers, naruto is almost 30 pls relax, sorta??? Like he’s just contemplative, superhero au, their powers aren’t actually specified, very original lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-13
Packaged: 2021-03-18 09:54:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28741329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spideywhiteys/pseuds/spideywhiteys
Summary: Naruto has been a hero for over a decade. Now he’s wondering if maybe he’s missed out on life, wondering if he’s missed out on important things like relationships, college degrees and mundane human things that seem to matter so much in movies. A friend reminds him that it’s not too late to start a new path...though maybe not in so many words.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi & Uzumaki Naruto, Hatake Kakashi/Uzumaki Naruto
Series: 365 Days of Naruto AUs [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2086938
Comments: 6
Kudos: 57





	falling like the stars

**Author's Note:**

> DAY 13: Superhero AU / Kakashi + Naruto

_ Superheroes die lonely. _

Naruto is twenty-eight and maybe twenty-eight is young but he feels so old these days, so old and so willing to believe the words he hears but no one says. Power comes with a price and that price weighs on his soul, weighs on his mind, weighs on his heart. 

Naruto is twenty-eight and he’s been in love twice, once in childhood and once as an adult. They didn’t last because he was always only half there, only half present while the other half wore a mask and armor and spilled sunshine into the streets. 

Sometimes he doesn’t know how he got to be twenty-eight. Close shaves in high school, encounters that left scars on his body and psyche; he remembers the bad days more than the good, even if he smiled through it all. Because despite the hurt he had been happy, happy to be alive and happy to win. Happy to forgive. Happy to save.

You can’t make the world better if you don’t try. You can’t make the world better if you don’t put your money where your mouth is, throw your back into it, bleed on the streets you call home. Naruto has done a lot of bleeding.

He looks out over the city, the nightlife, the shadowed buildings and orange, white, flickering green-yellow-red lights. It’s late enough that the streets are quiet, only the occasional flash of headlights or blaze of tail-lights seen. Naruto sits at the edge of a roof under a full moon. He looks from the city with lights like stars, to the sky where those stars are supposed to live — dimmed by light pollution.

“You shouldn’t be out right now.” 

A voice like silk, like the warmth of a campfire; Naruto feels the hairs on his arm stand up. It’s a voice he’s heard for years; one he recognizes like he recognizes the beginnings of a storm — dark clouds rolling across the skies and ozone on the tongue. 

Raiju slouches against the rooftop’s sturdy concrete barrier like he’s always been there, just mere feet from Naruto. The other man has always been like that, a soundless wraith swathed in tones of ink and midnight, laced with crimson, his snarling wolf mask gleaming white under the moon.

It’s a bizarre contrast to the sunny orange and yellow tones that make up Naruto’s hero suit. Raiju’s appearance is menacing, whereas Inari’s appearance is approachable — probably because of the cute fox ears twitching in his mess of blond spikes.

Naruto opens his mouth and tastes lightning, feels it skitter across his teeth; teeth too sharp for a human mouth, “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Hm.” Raiju shifts, still soundless. Maybe he  _ is _ a god. A ghost. Walking the mortal plane for all eternity and Naruto is just a blip on his radar, even now, when they’ve known each other for ten years. 

Naruto knows everything but a name. The voice like a tumbling waterfall, the faintest scent of ozone and sandalwood, the way Raiju stands still, so still and so quiet, that Naruto wants to reach out and touch the man just to see if he’s really still there. Things like favorite foods and colors and a joke they heard in passing, things like a television show they’re dying to watch or a shitty interaction they had earlier that week; these are things that make up people. Their memories and experiences. 

Inari and Raiju collide in memories, in experiences — they know things that no one else does. They know things they don’t dare whisper without masks on. 

Raiju doesn’t push because he knows Naruto will inevitably crack. He sits and becomes a piece of the background, his lack of presence making Naruto feel both like he’s alone and safe to speak, and desperate to pull the other man into the light.

“My mother asked why I stopped dating.” He starts, because he always starts but Raiju always finishes, always gets the last word and makes Naruto trail after him like a puppy. “Can’t really tell her why, obviously. But sometimes I think she knows. Ya know? She’s too much like me — or I’m too much like her, ‘n her and my dad really know me best, after all. They probably already know.”

“If they already know, then…” 

“Then why’s she askin’? I dunno, maybe she thinks I can do  _ this _ and be happy too.”

Raiju makes his steps obvious, brushing their arms together like it means nothing. But it means everything because Raiju doesn’t like touch, doesn’t appreciate kind gestures the way Naruto is desperate for them. He holds walls around him. Unbreakable steel molded by sheer determination. Desperation. 

Naruto wants to know what hurt him so bad. Wants to wash away the sadness and sin and blood under sharp fingernails. He wants to do a lot of things for Raiju; to make up for mistakes, to repay favors, to do it just to do something nice, to do it because he’s pretty sure Raiju needs it. Needs it like people need sleep and food.

“You’re not happy?”

Like pulling teeth or ripping off a bandaid. Naruto looks up to the moon and blinks and blinks and —

“Dunno.” He scratches his head, fingers brushing soft fur. Carmine ears flicker, swerving to catch the sound of a rumbling car engine three streets over. “I think so. Don’t have a reason not to be.”

Raiju says, “Absence of sadness doesn’t equate to happiness.” His clawed hand, hidden by sleek, skin-tight gloves, pinches at the tip of one of Naruto’s ears. “Feeling nothing at all is almost worse.”

He doesn’t bother moving away from the wandering fingers, letting Raiju’s hand sink into blond hair, bump against furry ears and make a home in Naruto’s heart. Under a smiling fox mask, azure eyes peer from the glaring moon to the piercing gaze of a man that he knows everything and nothing about.

He looks and looks and isn’t sure what he’s looking for. What is he doing, when his closest friends are superheroes and his real life is a daily chore? Who does he like more, Inari or Naruto? Why is it getting harder to be both when he  _ is _ both? 

Naruto sinks against Raiju and the man lets him, every muscle individually tensing before relaxing, like a full body shiver. Blond hair brushes a dark-clad chest, the thrumming heart inside like thunder to Naruto’s acute hearing. 

A sigh. An exhale like a great wave or the briefest beat of a butterfly wing. “I dunno what I wanna do with my life.”

Raiju pats his back stiffly. Awkwardly. There’s no familiarity in the movement, just a robotic quality that spins terrible, haunting stories. They burrow their way into Naruto’s head and demand to stay. He doesn’t want them to, because he doesn’t want them to be true. Wants fiction, wants woes spun by his own active imagination.

But the almost childish tenacity Raiju displays, the careful, calculating movements that tell of his watchful eyes and habit of correcting in the moment via trial and error — Raiju does not touch, usually, and Naruto thinks it must be because he doesn’t know how. The fact that he lets Naruto use him in this moment, the fact that he breaks out of the box he’s locked himself in to experiment with touch that is foreign —

Naruto smiles under the mask and laughs like the world doesn’t make sense and never will. But he feels better. Like maybe all he needed was a single hand reaching out to prod his pieces back into place.

“You’re a good man,” he says, and Raiju jolts like he’s shocked. “Thanks for being my hero tonight.”

Funny, all things considered.

“Ah, well.” The voice that belongs to no face Naruto knows wavers, drops. Halts at the edge of a precipice. “That’s the job.”

“No.” Naruto whispers, but it might as well be a scream with the way it tears his throat on the way out. Naruto doesn’t whisper. He isn’t made for stealth. He screams and yells and draws all eyes to him because he is the sun and the moon holds him in his arms because…

“I don’t want to be a job.”

Raiju’s chest sinks with an exhale. His heart is a flurry of life, his pulse a reassurance. Naruto pulls away and curves his gloved hands around Raiju’s. His smile is sunny and bright, revitalized. Hidden under a mask but brilliant enough to echo through his body, to shine through the near unbreakable material.

“I wanna be your friend. I wanna be someone special. I wanna be someone who walks next to ya. ‘N when I say I got your back, I want you to say that you have mine, even for things like this.”

Raiju’s hands are cold even through the gloves. Naruto is a solar storm, a source of volcanic heat. He warms the space between them like a space heater and pulls everyone who looks too closely into his orbit. No one is immune, not even the moon and all his stars and scars and craters. 

“When did you get so mature, huh?” The taller man says, emotion in his attempted lack of emotion. “Sometimes I don’t think you even need me at your side anymore.”

“Don’t think that!” Naruto exclaims, “I’ll always need you, ya know!”

Raiju sighs, and this one isn’t a force of nature, but instead just a sigh. Just a quiet sound that’s too fond and too sweet and it falls from Raiju’s lungs and hangs in the air. 

“It’s going to be cold tomorrow.”

“What?” Naruto tilts his head, their fingers curling and uncurling together. Deliberating. Momentous.

Raiju tightens his grip and Naruto thinks that maybe he’s sunk another layer in. “It’ll be cold, so you should wear a sweater when we get coffee.”

“Coffee?” The word rolls off of Naruto’s tongue and sits, patiently, as his brain chugs a few seconds behind. “Like...wait, are you…? Out of— In civvies?”

Their fingers unlace. Fall between them. A black-clad finger presses against his mask and  _ pushes, _ enough that Naruto rocks back on his heels, his tail swishing to keep his balance.

“Yeah. In  _ civvies, _ Inari. Like friends do.” Raiju wavers but does not fade, stays lit in the ethereal glow of a moon too big for the sky, too small next to the sun. He never had any chance at all to win. “Maybe we’ve earned an end.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow / Support me on [Tumblr](https://spideyfoof.tumblr.com/) and let me know if you'd like to see more of this AU!


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